When he’s at his best, Trevor Williams can paint the four corners of home plate and keep aggressive batters off balance.

He comes into every game looking for a fight, at least in figurative terms, according to his catcher, Francisco Cervelli.

“His mentality is, `I’m going to get you,’ ” Cervelli said.

But Williams is not perfect and he isn’t much of a hitter, and that’s what the Pirates needed most Tuesday night at PNC Park — perfection and clutch hits — against the Arizona Diamondbacks.

They got neither — although Williams was about as good as any pitcher can get – and the result was a 2-1 loss, the Pirates’ third in a row after a five-game winning streak. The Pirates had only one hit in 10 at-bats with runners in scoring position.

Somehow, Williams wore a smile after a game in which he was the losing pitcher, despite allowing only four hits and one walk in seven innings.

“It’s baseball,” he said. “There are going to be changes throughout the year. We’re going to be giving up some runs and the offense is going to pick us up.

“It’s the ebbs and flows of a season. We’re going to have some tough losses and we’re going to have some great wins.”

You might say the Pirates are wasting good starting pitching. They’ve lost the first two of the current four-game series against the Diamondbacks, even while starting pitchers Joe Musgrove and Williams did enough to win.

The Diamondbacks scored a run in the fourth and another in the sixth.

In the fourth, Adam Jones hit an opposite-field double to score a run on a pitch Williams wished he didn’t throw.

“I would have liked to gone in more,” he said of the sinker. “I feel like every sinker I’ve thrown this year is for an RBI and is down the line, either getting pulled or it’s getting hit the other way.

“He’s a very good baseball player and I gave him a pitch to hit.”

In the sixth, Williams only walk came around to score on a double by Eduardo Escobar and a ground ball to second base. Jarrod Dyson was originally called out at home, but replay review overturned the call when it was clear he swiped his hand across the plate before the tag.

Cervelli’s double scored the Pirates’ only run in the second. Arizona starting pitcher Luke Weaver, who came from the St. Louis Cardinals in the Paul Goldschmidt trade, kept the Pirates off balance with his changeup.

“Melky (Cabrera) hit the first changeup (Weaver) threw for a double,” Pirates manager Clint Hurdle said. “After that, he kept throwing it, went to it more and more and more and we were just mis-hitting it.

“Something we need to talk about as a group and get the feeling back and understand what the players are thinking, what they’re looking at. what they’re seeing.”

After the sixth one- or two-run loss of the season, the Pirates (12-9) have scored only 17 runs in the past six games.

Like Williams, Cervelli, who is hitting .162, said, “This is baseball. It’s probably the toughest sport in the world.

“You have a bad day and tomorrow you come and go four for four and next day four strikeouts. It’s crazy. You have to stay with your mind fresh.

“We have to do a better job hitting. I have to do a better job hitting. I have to execute. I’m not doing my job.”

The Pirates were not without opportunities.

Josh Bell, who came into the game with a major league-leading .643 batting average with runners in scoring position, struck out three times. The last one came with runners on first and second and two out in the eighth.

Hurdle took a shot in the ninth when he sent up Jung Ho Kang to pinch-hit for rookie Cole Tucker with Jason Martin at second base. Kang, who is hitting .140 and has struck out 24 times in 57 at-bats, flied out to left field against relief pitcher Greg Holland to end the game.

“Kang has actually seen him,” Hurdle said of Holland. “Tried to give it a shot, maybe ride a long ball out of there. That’s why.”

The Pirates, who are playing without center fielder Starling Marte and left fielder Corey Dickerson after missing Gregory Polanco for the season’s first 19 games, lost another outfielder when Bryan Reynolds injured his left quad while running to first base on a single.

“It was the leg he had some challenges with throughout spring training,” Hurdle said. “Betting on it being maybe a couple days vs. anything further.”

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